76 CHARLES W. HARGITT 



logical phenomena in connection with behavior. This was 

 especially marked in certain cases of color change associated 

 with handling, or close scrutiny. What was at first thought 

 might be a direct reaction from darkness, as in the carrying 

 of specimens in dark boxes, etc., was later found to be 

 probably an emotional or nervous reaction due to handling. 

 And the same was found to be the case in certain instances 

 where specimens became aware of the fact that they were under 

 observation. This happened too often to be regarded as merely 

 a coincidence. And it seems altogether probable that some of 

 the apparent conflicts of behavior are likewise due to psychic 

 or emotional factors. Gadow cites cases in which male lizards 

 while fighting exhibited marked color changes. And the facts 

 herein described seem, at least in certain cases, to find their 

 simplest explanations just along these lines. 



In our zeal to interpret every aspect of behavior in terms of 

 chemistry, or physics, impelled by a blind adherence to the 

 law of parsimony, the tendency has been to proscribe any appeal 

 to the psychical and to hold up to some measure of contempt 

 any disregard of this rule or method. Far be it from me to 

 invoke the mystical, or to read into animal activities a hasty 

 anthropomorphism; yet as I have had occasion to point out in 

 another connection, it is more than possible, indeed highly prob- 

 able, that under the current stress of a scientific fashion not a 

 little of current interpretation has been vitiated by the folly of 

 a blind following of blind adherence to theory. He is a rash 

 leader who would fix the metes and bounds of consciousness or 

 mind in the world of the living. Surely it is no longer circum- 

 scribed by the genus Homo ! If the first limit set at this point 

 was by a procrustean philosophy, let us beware that the onus 

 of a similar, not to say worse, blunder be not laid to the charge 

 of a hasty science] There are other minds than ours, and they 

 share something in common with us in those psychic powers 

 which count for something in the stress of evolution, and as 

 behavior in its manifold aspects gives expression to the endless 

 struggle it is not strange to find involved therein the psychic 

 along with other factors which go to constitute the organism 

 and its environment. 



